Study: NJ beaches 30-40 feet narrower after storm

SPRING LAKE, N.J. — The average New Jersey beach is 30 to 40 feet narrower after Superstorm Sandy, according to a survey that is sure to intensify a long-running debate on whether federal dollars should be used to replenish stretches of sand that only a fraction of U.S. taxpayers use.

Some of New Jersey's famous beaches lost half their sand when Sandy slammed ashore in late October.

The shore town of Mantoloking, one of the hardest-hit communities, lost 150 feet of beach, said Stewart Farrell, director of Stockton College's Coastal Research Center and a leading expert on beach erosion.

Routine storms tear up beaches in any season, and one prescription for protecting communities from storm surge has been to replenish beaches with sand pumped from offshore. Places with recently beefed-up beaches saw comparatively little damage, said Farrell, whose study's findings were made available to The Associated Press.

1. Probably the exception is the Wildwoods and possibly Cape May

I go to Wildwood Crest every year and it seems that the beeches there grow larger during every winter with severe Noreasters. Sometimes you feel as though you are on a hike just to get across the beach to the water. Where I go some of the beaches are hundreds of yards wide.

I haven't been to Atlantic City since Sandy but I am interested to see it because in recent years they have pumped a lot of sand there and the beaches were pretty wide recently compared to how they were maybe 10 years ago.

As for the rest of the coast there are many places where they simply should never have been permitted to build in the first place, like Long Beach Island.

3. Ah, Belmar, home of the Osprey Saloon

as I remember from my college days including one particular night when I woke up the next morning in a hotel in Asbury Park with leopard skin sheets.

Spent many a summer at various places on the Jersey shore but never Belmar. Seaside, Ortley, Pt Pleasant and later LBI (until it became too expensive. But my fondest shore days were as a young child when we spend whole summers in a little rented bungalo at Beach 106th Street in Rockaway, NY. The sight of the destruction there really upset me.